The Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel feature on Indianapolis Colts’ owner Jim Irsay that aired Tuesday was at least 12 years in the making. Correspondent Andrea Kremer, who helmed that segment, told AA Tuesday she’d been trying that long to get Irsay to agree to a long-form TV interview. And Irsay now seems to have some regrets about that.
The piece as a whole was a detailed and nuanced look at Irsay’s life. It covered the challenges he went through growing up, including how his sister died in a car crash, how his brother was institutionalized and later died, and how his father battled alcoholism. It also went into Irsay’s own struggles with alcohol and drugs, the time he almost died from an overdose, and how he credits Alcoholics Anonymous with his sobriety and current life.
But the piece featured one particular wild quote from Irsay that wound up being seen by many who didn’t even watch the show. That would be his claim that his 2014 DUI arrest in Carmel, Indiana only came because he couldn’t walk straight after hip surgery, that he only pled guilty to a misdemeanor “to make it go away,” and that he was “prejudiced against as a rich, white billionaire”:
#Colts owner Jim Irsay, speaking on @RealSportsHBO about being charged with a DUI in 2014:
“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich white billionaire. … “
“I don’t care what it sounds like. It’s the truth. … I could give a damn what people think how anything sounds … “ pic.twitter.com/97Z0KPXxqX
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) November 22, 2023
Here is the video of #Colts owner Jim Irsay discussing his DUI in 2014 on @RealSportsHBO. There’s footage of a field sobriety test, which he did not perform well.
“The arrest was wrong. I had just had hip surgery. … And what? They asked me to walk the line. Are you kidding me?” https://t.co/JPJUVSTBAk pic.twitter.com/yQwdwojcKw
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) November 22, 2023
On Wednesday, Irsay took to Twitter to blast Real Sports and “Bryan Gumbel” over this. There, he talked about his “Kicking the Stigma” initiative with the Colts (which Kremer referenced in discussions about this piece). He also claimed that he was treated with “mean spirited contempt” over his struggles with addiction, and that he would have been portrayed differently if he had survived cancer.
https://twitter.com/JimIrsay/status/1727343055915692053
That doesn’t seem really fair, though. The piece as a whole was an in-depth look at Irsay’s highs and lows, and most of the commentary was just from him. The only outside figure featured was former Colts’ quarterback Peyton Manning, who had lots of praise for Irsay. But this was mostly Real Sports letting Irsay tell his own story. The program didn’t necessarily fully endorse his version, but didn’t criticize it either. And the backlash Irsay is getting is for a remarkably over-the-top response he gave to Kremer’s question about that 2014 arrest. If he had simply said “I made a mistake, I’ve learned from it,” none of this would have happened.
Yes, Kremer asked Irsay some tough questions about the darker periods in his life, as she should have. But the backlash here came from Irsay’s own words, not any unfair presentation by Real Sports. In fact, Kremer went as far as to ask Irsay immediately after the “prejudiced against” comment if he was aware how that sounded, and he chose to double down rather than walk it back. Here’s what Kremer told AA Tuesday on why she did that:
“In this case, with Jim, I’ve learned over the years that when someone says something that could be considered controversial, when you repeat the words back to them, you take the risk of having them hear it and pull back on it, trying to walk that comment back. But with Jim, it was just more about not questioning that he really believed that, he was very vociferous about that, it was just more along the lines of ‘Do you really understand how this is going to play out?'”
“And clearly he did, because he doubled down on it in our conversation. And it was the one time in our interview that he was really angry. And he was really angry, not at me, but at the recollection of the whole issue. He said it over and over again, really, this was just how he felt. So again, when this is what somebody believes, what they’re saying, and it’s their reality, you’ve got to take them at their word.”
As Kremer also told AA, it was remarkable to see a NFL owner agree to provide as much access and as many candid comments here as Irsay did. And Irsay certainly didn’t have to do that. But after having done so, he shouldn’t be blaming the show for the criticism he’s now getting for his comments there. It’s reasonable to take offense at a seemingly-slanted or out-of-context portrayal of remarks, but that’s absolutely not what happened here.
Kremer and Real Sports gave Irsay lots of room to present his side. And the issue many had is with what he said, not how the show presented it. (Indeed, the headline-making comment here was only a small part of the feature, not its overall focus.) And the backlash Irsay is now getting is not about his addiction battles, or how Real Sports covered those. It’s about one comment he made that many found incredibly over-the-top. That’s on him, and he should take ownership of that, not blame the show that aired his comment.
[Jim Irsay on Twitter]
